Kid-Friendly, Earth-Friendly Solstice Crafts » No Unsacred Place

In my latest post over on No Unsacred Place, I share some of the kid-friendly craft recipes I use for making ornaments and animal-safe ritual offerings for our winter solstice celebrations:

It’s become a winter solstice tradition at our house to wake before sunrise on the morning after the longest night and head down to the local park where we climb the highest hill and greet the new sun with songs and offerings. My husband’s four kids are with us for the week, and we spend hours in the days leading up to Alban Arthuan preparing for our dawn celebration, rehearsing songs like They Might Be Giants’ “Why Does the Sun Shine?” and making birdseed ornaments and other animal-friendly decorations to leave as offerings to the land spirits in the local woods.

This year, we’ll be spending the winter solstice with my parents in Lancaster, and instead of my husband and I attending Christmas Midnight Mass at my father’s church, my parents will be rising at dawn with us and the kids and tramping out to the woods to join in with our Pagan celebrations. The kids are extra excited to be spending their first solstice with their new step-grandparents, and we’ve been working extra hard this week to make sure we have all of our gifts to each other and to the gods ready to go.

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Alison Leigh Lilly nurtures the earth-rooted, sea-soaked, mist-and-mystic spiritual heritage of her Celtic ancestors, exploring themes of peace, poesis and wilderness through essays, articles, poetry and podcasting. You can learn more about her work here.